


The Beasts of Modernity

by Azzandra



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Ferdinand in his 90s, Future Fic, Gen, Mentor Ferdinand, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, very very post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: It is not hazing, because the Ministry of the Interior is an institution with too much inherent dignity to engage in such a practice. But it is confirmed, when you are given the post, that you have been assigned to this position because of your youth and inexperience. It is the kind of assignment that is styled as desirable, without being actively desired by anyone.The administrator you talk to congratulates you on the start of an undoubtedly brilliant future career in the government bureaucracy, and shuffles you out the door with your papers. From this day forth, you are Ferdinand von Aegir's secretary, and your first order of business is to figure out who in the hell that is.It's a very long time after the war, and the world, life and technology are all marching on.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 111





	The Beasts of Modernity

It is not hazing, because the Ministry of the Interior is an institution with too much inherent dignity to engage in such a practice. But it is confirmed, when you are given the post, that you have been assigned to this position because of your youth and inexperience. It is the kind of assignment that is styled as desirable, without being actively desired by anyone.

The administrator you talk to congratulates you on the start of an undoubtedly brilliant future career in the government bureaucracy, and shuffles you out the door with your papers. From this day forth, you are Ferdinand von Aegir's secretary, and your first order of business is to figure out who in the hell that is.

* * *

You find the office: small, out of the way, in a drafty old wing of what had once been the Imperial Palace and was now the main administrative building for the territorial province of Adrestia.

Ferdinand von Aegir is a doddering old man, not quite bent over, but stooped with age and holding himself upright by aid of a cane with a horse-head handle. Looking at him, there is a quality to his appearance like old photographs, before they knew how to colorize them properly: his hair is long and white, tied back with a ribbon, and his clothing is of fine make, but gives the impression that he perfected his style sometime at the turn of the century and has not thought to change it since. He still wears waist-coats, and a cravat instead of a real tie. Everything about him is antiquated, and you expect his attitude to match.

But when you meet him for the first time, his smile is blinding. There are deep furrows in his face that no doubt started as laugh lines some decades ago, and though he has more wrinkles than you've seen on a single man, he carries himself with an energy that belies his age.

"Ah, they always send me the young ones," he says, clapping you on your shoulder like he's congratulating you. "You have got much to learn, so I hope you can keep up!"

"Of course, sir," you say, while hoping in turn that keeping up won't involve making sure he doesn't break a hip.

He turns towards a cabinet then--the entire room is cabinets, and bookshelves, and art crammed onto every spare stretch of wall in-between. His desk is meticulously clean, but that is because the in-coming tray has been moved to the floor next to the desk, and piled high enough with papers that the top of the stack is level with the desk top. The more important items his desk is currently holding: a tacky statue of a rearing horse; a hot plate; an ink stand with an actual quill (!) and an open book with a magnifying lens marking the page.

"Now tell me, what sort of tea do you like?" Mr. Aegir asks, popping open a cabinet door to reveal a bevy of tins with looping cursive names like 'Albinean Honey Blend' or 'Almyran Pine Tea'. The only one you could recognize by taste would be the chamomile.

"It's all leaf juice to me, sir," you reply, because you've never been able to stand the stuff.

Your new boss seems offended by this, looking at you like you had just insulted his entire family lineage.

"Goddess preserve me," he mutters to himself, as he sorts through the tins, "you have much to learn indeed!"

* * *

You learn Mr. Aegir's handwriting first. He always starts with a flourish, like an illuminated script with the first letter lovingly painted, but by the second line, the letters lose some of their loops and curlicues, and flatten out into the bureaucratic script that most everyone in administration uses, meant to be legible more than pretty. When he is too hurried even for that, or when his hand starts hurting from writing too long, he uses shorthand instead. It is a pragmatic style for someone who was apparently a duke in his youth, or perhaps still is one now. You don't really know how that works, because the nobility has not been relevant since before you were born, but there are still a few from the old days knocking about, all of them about as old as Mr. Aegir and still holding onto their titles. There's something romantic about that notion, like Mr. Aegir is a remnant of some ancient era.

He signs himself in the old mode, too: not Ferdinand Aegir, but Ferdinand von Aegir, or Ferd. v. Aegir when he's abbreviating in his drafts. When you transcribe his letters, you make certain to copy this name in full, because otherwise he makes you rewrite the entire thing. He is particular about his name in ways you have not encountered of anyone, but it is a small eccentricity to accommodate. 

He writes in quill (with a real feather, plucked from a pegasus, he claims) and you transcribe everything on your typewriter. You see the evidence of his failing eyesight in how large he writes by hand, and how he squints through his little magnifying lens as he re-reads his drafts, but he is resistant about getting glasses. He cannot 'pull them off', he claims, which is a notion you find ridiculous. But then, there are plenty of things he finds ridiculous about you in turn.

All his previous secretaries transcribed by hand, he explains one day over tea. It is the day when he has you try four-spice blend.

"Everyone's learning to type nowadays, Mr. Aegir," you explain to him. "It's quicker, and it's easier to read when you don't have to sit around deciphering someone else's handwriting."

"It is so loud," he complains, more disappointed than annoyed. "Does it not take all the joy out of writing, to be clanging at some instrument all day?"

You shrug. His previous secretaries may not have known how to type, but you do, and any secretaries he might have after you--assuming he lives that long--are likely to be inclined towards this skillset as well. Technology marched on and well past him as he sat scribbling with his pegasus feather quill.

One day, you return from lunch to find Mr. Aegir sitting at your desk. Your tiny desk is in the bare anteroom to his office, separated by a solid wood door. There is no way he confused your desk for his.

You stop in the doorway, unnoticed as you watch him. 

He taps hesitantly at the keys, hunting out one letter at a time and frowning as he presses down slowly, fascinated as the little hammer springs up to tap the page and stamp the letter into the paper. He is so taken with the process, and you are so taken with watching him, that he still does not notice you as he reaches the end of the line. He doesn't know how to move on to the next line below, and fiddles fruitlessly with the knobs and levers, trying to figure out how you did it. You clear your throat before he can upset your settings too badly; you're very particular about how you calibrate your typewriter, after all.

He flinches and looks at you abashed.

"Pardon me," he says, picking up his cane from where he had hung it on the edge of your desk, and shuffling over to his own office.

"Would you like to learn to type?" you ask. It seems like something of a bad idea--not that you would be made obsolete, but because you already predict he's going to be maddeningly slow on the machine, and the writing will be too small for him to easily see--but something about the easy way he shares his office and his tea with you makes you want to extend your own small courtesies to him.

"Oh, my, no," he shakes his head, but gives you another of his warm smiles. "I am afraid this contraption would wreak havoc on my wrists. I do not know how you do it."

"It's just practice," you say.

"Do not sell yourself short, my dear," Mr. Aegir laughs. "Your generation has achieved wonders in its time."

But he halts in the door way, his hands worrying at the handle of his cane as he considers something.

"You are very quick on this machine, are you not?" he asks, and you nod, uncertain where this is going. "Would you be able to take dictation? If it is not too much bother."

"It would be no bother at all," you promise.

Maybe his wrists really aren't what they used to be.

* * *

You are uncertain what Mr. Aegir does. You know the name of his position, some senior advisor role that belongs to no clear department, but you have no idea what that role entails, other than lifelong tenure. You can discern little enough from his letters; many of them are addressed to people you recognize as important, even if they are far away, but these letters seem personal in nature. One week, he is writing about the latest opera to a count in Leicester. The next week he writes to the Queen Dowager of Brigid, whom you did not even know was still alive, but must surely be pushing ninety by now. By the fact that Mr. Aegir is complimenting her on the results of her latest hunt, you assume she must be the most lethal nonagenarian in the hemisphere.

Other letters are to people you do not recognize, but must be fellow bureaucrats by the offices they are addressed to. These do not discuss personal matters, but tangled issues of law or granular details about the functions of the government. You can tell by how he couches his explanations that these are responses to inquiries people have made. You barely understand these letters.

Sometimes, someone comes in person. If Mr. Aegir is not in--which he is often not, because he likes to go out for his 'daily constitutionals', as he calls them--you take a message or turn them away. Some are more persistent than that, and insist on waiting outside the office door, anxiously shifting from foot to foot.

One day, you return from lunch to find an old man asleep in the anteroom, slumped into one of the chairs along the wall opposite to your desk.

You only know he is sleeping, and not dead, because of his earth-shaking snores. You poke at his arm, and his snore ceases for a few long seconds, but he remains so unstirred, that you have the brief, irrational fear that he has died in between one breath and the next. When his snore starts up again, so loud that the nearby window rattles in its frame, you are almost relieved.

You sit at your desk and quietly decide this is above your pay grade. You have letters to transcribe, and the sound of the typewriter, no matter how loud, seems to disturb the old man's slumber not a single wit. He does not look like any of the usual slew of bureaucrats who visit Mr. Aegir--not least of all because they aren't usually as old as him--but he has a certain air of by-gone fashion that makes you almost certain they are of a kind in some way. He wears a coat that might have been ornate once, though now it is threadbare, and he has glasses with lens as thick as jar bottoms. They make him look like some manner of insect, in all honestly.

Mr. Aegir ambles in eventually, and gives the sleeping man an annoyed look.

"Of all the people getting up to travel at our age!" Mr. Aegir grouses, before he pokes the sleeping man, bellowing louder than you'd ever heard him, "Linhardt! Wake up!"

It takes some very lively shaking to wake him, and even then, the so-named Linhardt just blinks slowly awake, and takes his time stretching. Eventually, he looks up at Mr. Aegir, adjusts his glasses, and then blinks his rheumy blue eyes at you.

Mr. Aegir introduces him as Linhardt von Hevring; another of his friends named for a place on a map. Though, he doesn't append a noble title to the name, not a duke nor count nor lord of any type, and that is perhaps more curious.

"Ugh, that tedious nomenclature?" Mr. Hevring scoffs after the introduction. "Linhardt Hevring is just fine."

"Why are you sleeping in my office?" Mr. Aegir asks.

"Your office? Is it not the office of this lovely creature?" he gestures towards you, and you stay silent in response, not certain if you should be charmed or if you are being mocked.

"Linhardt," Mr. Aegir says, this time plainly exasperated.

"Is it so unbelievable I might come to visit a very old friend?" Mr. Hevring asks, with an air of cherubic innocence that doesn't even fool you, much less Mr. Aegir. When Mr. Aegir's steely stare does not relent, he sighs and confesses, "Very well. All I require is a tiny slip of paper that will help me access some piddly archives. It's no bother to someone as important as you, I'm sure."

"Well," Mr. Aegir says, "at least you learned to ask permission. You are too old to be sneaking into places anymore."

"You are right, I'm afraid," Mr. Hevring agrees with an air of regret. "I got caught last time."

From there you are witness to a spirited round of catch-up between two old men, as they insist you must take tea with them. Mr. Hevring looks close to nodding off the entire time, but stirs from his drowse to add color commentary as Mr. Aegir regales you with stories from their school days at Garreg Mach.

"He was always falling asleep in class. In the middle of the day!" Mr. Aegir reports, looking appropriately scandalized. "I daresay he would have been falling asleep on the battlefield, were he not so squeamish about blood."

"When sleep takes me, it takes me," Mr. Hevring shugs carelessly. "Can I help it if I could not keep my eyes open in the day?"

"That sounds like a serious medical condition," you put in, and both men turn to look at you in surprise, as if they had forgotten you exist. "You probably shouldn't have been anywhere near a battlefield."

There is a prolonged stretch of silence as the two continue to stare at you, and you take a sip of the tea, now nervous to have said anything at all. You suspect you were only meant to be a spectator, not a participant in their repartee.

"You see?" Mr. Hevring gestures towards you pointedly. "We come around to what I've always said. I should not have been anywhere near a battle field, and even this young thing can tell."

"Well." Mr. Aegir takes a sip from his cup, frowning. "Those were different times. There were many expectations put upon us, as children of nobility."

"Yes," Mr. Hevring agrees. "Quite tedious, wasn't it?"

* * *

The day following Linhardt Hevring's visit, you find Mr. Aegir much more inclined towards nostalgia. He tells you about his other classmates at the time, the few living ones being people you recognize as his correspondents, but also with some surprising names thrown in.

"Dorothea Arnault," he says with a wistful look in the day. "She was a famous songstress, you know."

"Oh. Dorothea Arnault," you repeat, bright with recognition. "As in, Arnault and Leclerc! The musical company!"

Mr. Aegir looks at you, surprised.

"My goodness, I could swear that was from before your day," he says.

"My parents had one of their records," you say, grinning as you recall. 

You'd heard it countless times growing up, the sound grainy but warm whenever your parents put music on the phonograph. The Arnault and Leclerc Musical Company put out many albums, and Dorothea Arnault sang on nearly all of them, but Yuri Leclerc had been notoriously cagey about his voice being recorded, so the one album on which they sang together was something of a collector's item. Not that you knew that growing up, when their voices melding into a playful duet was simply the music to which your parents danced after dinner.

"But, back to the point, you knew Dorothea Arnault?" you ask, excited.

"I knew Yuri, as well. He was a classmate too, in a sense," Mr. Aegir explained. "I did not expect they still had fans! A testament to their talents, I should think. If only all our legacies were as worthy as theirs."

For some reason, that was not a connection you had ever made in your mind. You know Mr. Aegir went to the Garreg Mach Officers Academy, you knew Dorothea Arnault and Yuri Leclerc met there, and also met Bernadetta Varley, who would become such a large part of their lives later on. But it feels extremely odd to connect this in your mind with the fact that Mr. Aegir had been in the same year as them, and so had the then crown prince of Faerghus, and the future king of Almyra. How one generation managed to boast of so many significant individuals, concentrated in basically the same class, is staggering to you.

But you want to hear more about Yuri and Dorothea, which may well be shallow of you, considering the other, much more historically significant 

individuals Mr. Aegir knew in his day, yet he happily agrees to tell you.

His anecdotes take a detour through the years of the War of Unification, but he avoids any lurid details of what even you know was a very violent time. No, he tells you instead of Dorothea organizing a small improvised concert to raise everyone's spirits, and how Yuri helped, and how they learned that they loved singing together.

You listen in rapt attention as both your tea and his grow cold.

* * *

"We really must see to Linhardt's request, before he does something foolish," Mr. Aegir tells you later that week, even as he eyes his in-coming tray, stacked just as high as the day you arrived, and his out-going tray next to it, cleaned out that morning after you posted his mail. "Alas, we will bend the rules this one time and have him jump the line. At our age, there really isn't much time to wait."

To this end, he sends you down to the municipal archives, which are nearly to the other end of Enbarr, and insists you fetch all their guidelines for applying to visit their restricted records. He does not wish to have to find an official courier, so he gives you a letter and strict instructions about who to talk you, and you do his bidding exactly. 

You return with a stack of forms. Mr. Aegir sorts through the forms with a mildly disgruntled air.

"The printing press has given some people a disproportionate expectation for how much must be committed to writing," he sighs as he peers at the tiny writing through his magnifying glass. "I shall put on the kettle, we will need to fortify ourselves before delving into this task."

The rest of the afternoon is spent with Mr. Aegir explaining to you how to fill out the forms correctly, the expectations of procedure, spicy anecdotes of inter-departmental bickering. He makes the lecture feel like a friendly conversation over tea, for all that you merely swirl yours in its cup and let it cool almost untouched. It's mint today, and the taste is too overpowering for you. But you are learning to peer into the cogs of the bureaucratic machine and discern their function.

You notice how late it is getting when you look over Mr. Aegir's shoulder and notice the window is completely dark. You had turned on the lights at one point, and forgotten to check the time.

Mr. Aegir notices the late hour as well, then, and, apologetic to have kept you, tells you to go home and take the next morning off. You rush and catch the last tram home.

You do take the next morning off, but it is so you visit a specialty music shop. The phonograph you acquire is an older model, and second-hand, but it is adequate enough for your purpose. You also purchase a couple of Arnault and Leclerc albums to go with it; you have some at home you could use, but in truth, you do not mind the expense. Royalties from the musical company still go into the Varley Scholarship for the Arts, which put many underprivileged youths through the musical programs at Goneril Artisan Schools throughout Fodlan. Mr. Aegir would appreciate the good cause, you think.

Still, he is somewhat dubious as you set up the phonograph in his office, and show him how to put on a record.

"I am more inclined towards the live experience, I must admit," he tells you.

"When the artist is dead, one must compromise," you reply. It's maybe a bit harsh, but Mr. Aegir has been nothing but casual when speaking of death so far. You assume it is a result of age. He does not seem to resent the remark, at least, and he grows quiet as you set the needle onto the disc, and the phonograph hisses to life.

The first notes are the orchestra, the band warming up and stretching out their skills. Dorothea's voice comes on towards the middle of the song, a warbling melody about spring and young love.

Mr. Aegir looks thoughtful as he listens. You sit quietly and listen as well, but you are more anxious than anything; hoping that you didn't hoist around that heavy phonograph all the way here for nothing. If Mr. Aegir tells you to take it back, you're not convinced the music shop would give you your money back.

You are so deep in your own thoughts, that you don't notice until nearly the end of the album that Mr. Aegir has tears tracking down his cheeks, glistening where they catch in the deep lines of his wrinkles. You flinch, and the music comes to an end, and then you sit watching Mr. Aegir's face in alarm.

He sits still for a minute more even after the music has gone quiet, and then touches a hand to his face, surprised.

"My goodness," he chuckles weakly, "I suppose that truly was an experience."

He smiles at you as he takes out a handkerchief, dabbing at his face.

"Have I told you yet how I met Dorothea?" he asks.

"At Garreg Mach?"

"No... no, before that."

His face is still damp as he tells you, smiling and charmed, of seeing Dorothea for the first time, of hearing her sing, of the misunderstanding that resulted. You are taken in by the story. He does not ask you to take back the phonograph.

* * *

"He has fallen asleep, undoubtedly," Mr. Aegir gripes, when Mr. Hevring does not come to the scheduled meeting.

He was penciled in for two hours ago. Mr. Aegir does not seem remotely surprised that he is not here.

"Maybe something happened," you suggest.

"Hm." Mr. Aegir looks unconvinced, to say the least. "He left an address, did he not? Send him an owl."

"He left a telephone number," you say, pointing to the address book. "I could give him a call. It would be quicker than an owl."

By Mr. Aegir's expression, he clearly forgot telephones existed. That is fine, as with how infrequently owls are used nowadays, sometimes you forget they once had an actual purpose. You are used to them being urban pests more than anything, screeching at night outside your window and leaving dead rats on your windowsill like some sort of threatening reminder that they roam the night.

With Mr. Aegir's permission, you go down to the lobby, and dial in the five digit number that Mr. Hevring left along with his address. You are still pondering that Mr. Hevring seems much more inclined to embracing new technology, when someone on the other end of the line picks up.

"Hello?" a belligerent-sounding woman answers, taking you aback for a moment. 

You straighten up in the booth, and lean closer to the mouth piece.

"Hello? Mr. Hevring's residence?"

"Who's this?" the woman demands, neither confirming nor denying that you had dialed the correct number.

"I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Aegir's office. Mr. Hevring had an appointment, and he missed it. Is he there?"

There is a silence on the line, save for the scratchy background sound of indistinct voices where the lines cross and other people's telephone conversations jump over into yours. It is the only way you know the other person hasn't hung up.

"Hello?" you try again.

"I'm sorry, um," the woman starts, and trails off awkwardly. "This is his granddaughter, Maura. You're calling from his old war-buddy's office, right? Ferdinand von Aegir. Gramps said he was going to ask for a favor, I guess news hasn't reached you yet... ugh, I hate having to do this."

"Has something happened?" you ask, a strange dread tightening in your chest.

It takes a while for you to get the story out of her. She's Mr. Hevring's youngest grandchild, and she's at his apartment in Enbarr because he was found dead that morning.

She seems oddly at ease with this development, more so than you. A ninety-three-year-old man dying is probably not shocking to anyone, least of all his family who seems to have been expecting it for a while now.

"The old man's been on the outs for a while," she tells you. "Had me buy him a coffin last week, like he knew, you know? He's been way more lucid lately, too. They say old people get like that right before they die, sometimes."

You give your condolences for the third time over the course of this conversation, and Maura takes pity on you at this point.

"Hey, don't be too broken up about it, okay?" she tells you. "He had a good run. He outlived lots of people. Friends, enemies, his husband, two of his kids. He lived the life he wanted, and he wasn't the kind of guy who had regrets."

You promise not to be broken up about it. But then you end up giving your condolences once again.

* * *

It is a sunny day when Mr. Hevring is buried. Mr. Aegir takes the whole day off, but you still have your own work, so you spend the morning alone at the office, typing up letters and working through a small research task that Mr. Aegir has given you.

You rearrange his schedule, postponing meetings that he was meant to take today, and sending away any drop-ins. Mr. Aegir is not even supposed to step foot in the building, but of course, he is Ferdinand von Aegir and he does not obey expectations. He arrives just as you are about to leave for lunch, with Duscur take-away for you, and a flier.

"There is an art museum having an exposition," Mr. Aegir says, passing you the flier.

It advertises prominent painters of the previous century, foremost of which is Ignatz Victor.

"Have you ever seen an Ignatz in person?" Mr. Aegir asks you, looking wistful. "A thing of beauty."

"I don't think I've ever seen a real Ignatz, just reproductions," you say. You had a knock-off of 'The Second Advent of a Saint' hanging in the hallway just outside your childhood room, and the gentle face of Saint Cethleann is still an image you associate with home.

Mr. Aegir tsks at this information and shakes his head.

"You must see the real ones at least once," he says. "Life is... too short..."

He trails off sadly, uncomfortably, before he rallies again, and smiles at you.

"I still have much to teach you," he says, "and we must seize every opportunity for it."

He reached out to take your chin, looking into your eyes.

"We do not wallow, do we, my dear?" he says gravely. "We are too young for that sort of thing."

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, hot and uncomfortable as you blink them back quickly, but you also find a laugh bubbling up past your throat.

"Yes," you say. "We don't wallow."

"Good," Mr. Aegir nods, satisfied. "Do you see? You have been learning much already. It is good they sent you to me."

You suppose it is true. Though you like to believe you have been teaching him plenty as well. 

Mr. Aegir goes to the phonograph, and in halting motions, puts on a record, just as you showed it. The trilling voice of Dorothea floats through the office, singing about old friends and reunions at dawn.


End file.
